TORONTO — About three hours before his team played the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday night, Toronto Blue Jays manager John Gibbons fielded 20 or 25 queries from the assembled media. However, there were really only two themes being explored.

Toronto Blue Jays Adam Lind celebrates a home run with third base coach Luis Rivera. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Aaron Vincent Elkaim

Plus, the starting rotation, while not the team’s strength, is not last year’s Chien-Ming Wang, Ramon Ortiz-reliant nightmare. At the centre of the rotation’s rebirth: Mark Buehrle, who picked up his league-leading ninth win on Tuesday night, a 9-6 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays. The Blue Jays have now won eight games in a row, and are 19-7 in May. Buehrle allowed three earned runs in 6 2/3 innings, a sub-par performance by his unsustainable seasonal standards.

And, indeed, the offence was the biggest reason for Tuesday’s win. The Blue Jays scored four runs in the fifth inning, punctuated by back-to-back home runs from Adam Lind and Edwin Encarnacion. Encarnacion’s, which fell about 15 feet shy of reaching the fifth deck, was his 14th of May, tying him with Jose Bautista for most home runs for a Blue Jay in any month. Bautista hit 14 in June 2012.

Edwin Encarnacion #10 of the Toronto Blue Jays circles the bases after hitting a solo home run in the fifth inning during MLB game action as Yunel Escobar #11 of the Tampa Bay Rays watches on May 27, 2014 at Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)

However, the offence seems to be humming at its proper pace, more or less. Buehrle and the pitching staff is a reason for some of that hard-earned cynicism of Blue Jays observers. Buehrle is not a nobody, as Gibbons noted before the game: He is third, behind Tim Hudson and C.C. Sabathia in wins among active starters; he co-headlined a World Series-winning rotation for the White Sox in 2005; he has won four Gold Glove awards; and, memorably, he has tossed a perfect game and a no-hitter.

However, as he has entered his theoretical dotage as a starter, he has become a metronome. He has won either 12 or 13 games in each of his last five seasons, with an earned-run average between 3.59 and 4.28, throwing somewhere between 200 and 215 innings a season.

Casey Janssen #44 of the Toronto Blue Jays celebrates their victory with Dioner Navarro #30 during MLB game action against the Tampa Bay Rays. (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)

He came into the game with an 8-1 record, and a 2.16 ERA. There is little logic that says that at 35, Buehrle is ready for a 20-win, Cy Young-worthy season.

“How do you know it can’t happen?” Gibbons shot back. “I’m not a betting guy. But you never know what might happen.”

There have been several contributing factors, however, to the degree of success Buehrle has enjoyed this year, many of which could be placed under the broad heading of “luck.” He is allowing fewer home runs per fly balls than usual, and is stranding runners at a career-high rate, as noted by Grantland’s Jonah Keri. According to Scott Spratt of ESPN, the Blue Jays’ defence had saved 13 extra runs compared to the average defence in Buehrle’s first 10 starts, giving him some of the best support in the league.

That looked as if it might change early on. Centre-fielder Anthony Gose got a glove on Yunel Escobar’s liner to open the game, but could not grab it. Adam Lind also could not track down a pop-up in foul territory in the same inning. Nothing came of it.

Things then returned to the new normal: A troublesome sixth inning ended with Melky Cabrera catching a well-hit ball just shy of the warning track, and Juan Francisco grabbing a line drive hit right at him. Luck tends to even out, but that is not guaranteed.